Quote: "I can do anything you want me to
do so long as I don't have to speak."

Quote: "I don't get out of bed for less than
$10,000 a day."

Linda Evangelista Biography

It was a haircut that did it for Linda Evangelista – or rather, several
haircuts and, later, various changes of color. The Canadian model had been
modelling for several years, picking up around $600 per shoot for "mediocre"
work until she went for the chop and parted with her long, light brown hair.

When British Vogue picked up on some shots Arthur Elgort had taken of her,
she went stellar. Years later, after retiring from the modelling scene, she
would make a comeback on the cover of the US edition of the magazine that
first made her famous.

Born on May 10, 1965, into a large Italian-Canadian family in St Catherines,
a small town near Niagara Falls, Linda developed striking good looks and was
first spotted while just a teenager at a local beauty contest. An early modelling
experience almost made her turn her back on the business, however. While in
Japan on a work assignment, she contacted the Canadian embassy and was flown
home after being asked to do nude photos. Later,
nudity was not something Linda minded.

After Linda finished high school, her mother persuaded her to give modelling
a second chance and she signed with the Elite agency in New York. In 1984,
she moved to Paris, but good jobs were slow to come and it took three years
to land her first assignment for Vogue.

After marrying her first husband, model agency boss Gerald Marie in 1987,
Linda started to get higher-calibre work before hitting pay dirt with that
famous haircut. While it was she who uttered the now infamous line about not
getting out of bed for less than $10,000 a day, her fees soon shot up and
in 1990 it was reported that she had earned double that for an afternoon's
work.

But it wasn't really work for Linda. She has always said she loves modelling
– the clothes, the glamorous locations and everything that goes with
it. She has been accused of earnestness, but in what is essentially a frivolous
world, Linda is a consummate professional – she turns up to work on
time and is rarely pictured at show business parties.

When she started out, Linda had no idea just how big a name in fashion she
would become. "I've become bigger than the product," Evangelista
said in an interview in the mid-Nineties. "I never thought it would be
like this. I'm amazed. I was always obsessed with fashion, with the magazines,
the models and the poses. Now, Arab princes want to marry me."

After she divorced Gerald in 1993, Linda moved to the States full-time, where
she met and fell in love with Sex And The City star Kyle MacLachlan. The couple
split after a long engagement, and in 1998, a year after she had announced
her retirement from the modelling scene, Linda met Manchester United and France
goalkeeper Fabien Barthez. She became pregnant by him in 1999, but had a miscarriage
at six months.

No one quite knows if Linda's comeback is merely a fashion moment, or the
renaissance of a truly awesome fashion icon, but it's good to have her back
in front of the cameras, especially as she enjoys her job so much. No one
could have put it better than the eminently quotable model herself when, aged
30, she came up with another corking one-liner: "I will be walking the
catwalks with a cane if I have to!"